


What Love Is

by Indybaggins



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Closeted Character, F/F, Growing Old Together, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-27 00:05:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13868847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indybaggins/pseuds/Indybaggins
Summary: She watches Robert and Saul together and thinksI am not as brave as you,and then,I am braver, living like this.





	What Love Is

**Author's Note:**

> Set within the first three episodes of season four. 
> 
> Warnings: Mention of alcohol/drinking to cope, heavy pining. 
> 
> Thanks to the wonderful Jie_Jie for the beta <3

 

 

When Frankie moves away and leaves her, Grace makes the conscious decision to be fine. She _has_ to, it’s either that or spending each day in loneliness and she’s had enough of that to fill a lifetime. 

So she finds a new eccentric roommate, a new hobby, and she is perfectly content without Frankie who is finding her artistic fulfillment and inner bliss in the desert – or that’s what her emails say anyway. Grace receives nothing for a week, and then the same message sent twice. In glittery Comic Sans. 

It doesn’t matter that her heart feels like it is breaking all over again, and in a different, much more immediate way than it has ever been broken by Robert. It’s entirely normal that Frankie left to be with Jacob. 

Grace herself has Nick, a much too young and too rich and too gallant model that she’ll never hang onto but she has him, for now. She laughs at dinners and jokes and tilts her head with a long-ago learned coquettishness and of course it’s all an act, all of it, the layers of make-up and the layers of effort it takes. But that’s what dating is, smiling at someone over a dinner table while wearing an approximate three hours worth of illusion and hoping that the lighting won’t be too strong. 

That’s what friendship is, too, finding an appropriate person and laughing with them at in-jokes even if that person can’t tell that you’re numb inside. Or that you agree to go dancing only because you’ve been left and you’re clinging to anything that makes it hurt less and drinking, drinking. 

Grace Hanson doesn’t do emotions. It’s always made her feel better, thinking that. And missing Frankie, well, she decided not to, so that’s dealt with. Over and done, her life is full enough and Grace oh so nearly believes it.

Until Frankie comes back for a visit, that is.

Grace can’t stop looking at her. She catches herself reaching out to touch her and diverting her hand to play with some dangling bit of Frankie’s jewelry. Or a quick pat on Frankie’s leg. Or stroking Frankie’s arm. She wants to make sure Frankie’s real, that she’s actually here, in the house. 

When it becomes too much, Grace clutches her own arms instead. She holds onto her thin cardigan with her cold, sweating hands, feeling faintly sick.

Sheree is a godsend. She’s a distraction, a loud one, and that’s exactly what Grace wants. Grace drinks and holds onto herself, and everything is perfectly in order. She’s happy, she tells Frankie. 

There’s nothing else she can say. Frankie’s the one who left. _Frankie_ made that decision. And the fact that Grace would never, ever have left and that she saw herself growing old here with Frankie, in this beautiful house… 

It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. 

Of course then Frankie says she misses her, and those words circle straight back to the hope buried in Grace’s chest, bright and pure because she wants to be missed so badly she can taste it. 

“I miss you, too, Frankie,” falls from her lips like she was waiting to say it for weeks and months, as if that means anything. 

And then it turns out it does. 

Grace gets to dip her feet into the pool and lean her head onto Frankie’s shoulder, her whole body singing with Percocet and happiness. She’s giggly like a schoolgirl, happy like it’s a first date. Grace looks at herself in the mirror that night and she doesn’t recognize a thing of what she’s become. She’s Frankie’s friend, she tells herself. That is all. 

In living here, together, she became Frankie’s friend, and Frankie’s best friend, and ‘my Grace’ – Grace remembers each time Frankie said that, it felt as if there was a giant bell going off in her head, echoing all the way through her body. 

Of course then they have a ridiculous day where suddenly Grace is pretending to be a realtor and guiding Frankie through Sheree’s house, lying through her teeth, pretending and at the same time being more herself than she has been for months. She’s so whole, so real, so much herself when she’s with Frankie that it hurts. 

But Frankie left her. And now Frankie came back, and the giant bell inside of her keeps on going off and off, as if she’s meant to do something. 

Grace tries to be more distant for a few hours, and then inevitably circles back to touching Frankie. A pat on the shoulder. A quick squeeze. An ‘it’ll all be better soon’ hug. She was never a physical person – Grace knows this comes from some sort of abstract relief that Frankie’s back, and that the house is filled with the scent of patchouli and cheerio-stained fingerprints again. 

Frankie plays the radio too loud and loses her phone and entirely forgets that they still run a business. Frankie smiles at her, Frankie smiles so warmly it feels as if Grace is in her arms, and at night Grace lies awake thinking of what she said, once, when it was so near to being true, so near to being spoken: “I like this, too much.” 

She is right that it is that - too much. Grace knows it when she watches Frankie sleep on the sofa and she can’t pull her eyes away. 

She knows it in the jokes, the ones where Frankie implies something romantic between them and doesn’t mean it one bit, and where Grace smiles, smiles as if her stomach isn’t twisted and her breath held back by a lifetime of words she can’t say. 

So Grace dines with Nick and has sex with Nick and tries to find a sliver of love for him somewhere. She spends hours applying make-up and styling her hair, running her hands over her failing limbs and sagging skin, trying to find some truth there, too. She’s old. Forgotten, now. Her mind simply hasn’t caught up yet. 

Grace fights the good fight and gets on with it, one day at a time. One drink at a time. 

She doesn’t tell Robert, even though sometimes it’s on the tip of her tongue, waiting to be thrown out there like an anchor in his direction. She watches Robert and Saul together and thinks _I am not as brave as you,_ and then, _I am braver, living like this._

Grace holds her peace, because there is no other option, because it’s worth it, and because that’s what love is - taking what you’re offered, and nothing more. 

It makes her hold Frankie tighter, whenever she’s allowed to. It makes her laugh louder, and sleep less. It makes her a better friend, and a worse one, because whenever Grace considers losing Frankie, really losing her, the fear wraps around her throat as if it lives there.

Because it’s _Frankie_.

Frankie, who dances to the intro of the seven o’clock news and fills the living room with ping pong balls and snores like a freight train when she claims to be meditating. 

Frankie, who ruffles her hair to annoy her and paints ghastly pictures and does moss-graffiti street art. 

Frankie, who walks beside her on the beach and calls her ‘my Grace’. 

Frankie who is back home now, and Grace holds onto every single moment selfishly, almost ravenously. 

It’s all she needs, this. It’s enough. 

It has to be.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
